Hashing out the rough spots of when to hang up the Little League baseball bat and glove
Throughout my many years of coaching youth baseball, I have seen my fair share of army drill sergeant coaches who scream at kids, belittle them in front of the other kids and parents, drive the kids relentlessly in the name of learning how to win in the game of life and pretty much make the game little fun for most of the people involved, their kids included.What these coaches have in common is an insatiable drive to satisfy their own ego under the guise of “teaching” the kids the value of giving their all, taking pride in what they do and the value of a work ethic.
What they don’t understand is that what they are really doing is satiating their own egotistical drive to win.
While there is plenty of value in creating those traits in our kids through sports, from what I’ve seen, most of the coaches who choose this style would bend the rules, make kids feel horrible, step on anyone along the way and cheat like crazy to win, and rarely is it for the kids.
In my entire coaching life, I have promoted learning fundamentals while teaching kids to enjoy the game. If there is no joy at a young age, it doesn’t matter how hard they have been worked, how much they have won and what kind of fundamentals they learned, they are going to flee from the game at some point down the road. There must be fun along with the learning, or the drive to win is useless.
Now, while I am all for fun, building self-esteem, fair play and making sure that all of the kids are involved, there is a growing tendency in recent years which is just as disturbing as the “win-at-all-cost” philosophy.
I have seen numerous parents leading their children into baseball who have no desire to be there. Kids who are frightened of the ball, who aren’t having any fun, who would rather be eating chalk than staring down a fastball.
What youth baseball has created is an odd belief that it is a social event in which all young boys (and some girls) should be involved. It has become a right of passage for a youth to don the helmet, wield a bat and glove and hit the diamond. Parents want their children to be a part of something that they believe all youth should be involved in.
Being around other kids and interacting with them is a wonderful thing. I have witnessed some incredibly beautiful moments of acceptance, thoughtfulness, encouragement and building up of self-confidence by other kids on the team. It’s amazing how kids will rally around a teammate who would rather not be putting on a helmet and having a rock-hard object hurled at them from 45 feet.
Indeed, being involved in a social setting is a big part of growing up. But at what cost?
How long can a child walk up to the plate, stand and watch pitches, strike out and walk back to the dugout humbled, and how many times can they stick their glove out in hopes that the ball will somehow magically find its way into the webbing, only to have it avoid the glove by 15 feet? These kinds of constant failures could easily be reinforcing failure in the minds of these children.
When failure after failure is heaped upon a child, they soon become downtrodden and satisfied with defeat. The walk back to the dugout after whiffing becomes a normal part of life, like eating breakfast or tying their shoes.
How can these constant failures be of value?
I have had my share of kids who didn’t want to be there, and have always done my best to play them equally with the rest of the kids, and most importantly to build self-esteem. But when a child fails miserably time and time again, it simply can’t be good for their mind set.
The solution to this issue lies heavily with the parents, and their ability to talk to their child to answer one basic question: Do they want to be there?
I know that as parents, we want our children to be active, and get out from in front of the television and computer and take part in life, but are we doing our children a disservice by putting them in a situation to fail?
What parents need to do is to sit down with their child and communicate, rather than mindlessly push them into something they don’t want to be in, and a situation where failure is almost guaranteed. Find out what your child enjoys, and plug them into a social setting in which there is a greater chance of succeeding.
The easy solution is to simply ramrod them into the program, like they believe all the other parents do, because it is the social thing to do. That ideology to me is poor decision-making on the part of the parents, and I believe that just like the egotistical coach, it is being done more for the parents than the child.
They basically become the adult on the other end of the spectrum from Super Coach.
There are so many options available in which our kids can get involved and active. Swimming lessons, learning to play the guitar, Boy Scouts, biking, youth groups... there are plenty of ways in which we can set our kids up to learn how to win, and in the process, find joy in life that they won’t get playing a game they don’t truly enjoy, and never wanted to play in the first place.